General

A chameleonlike protein in neurons can change its mind, and in the process change our brains. Scientists at Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) uncovered new clues in the protein CPEB3 as part of their dogged pursuit of the mechanism that allows humans to have […]

Immunotherapy is a promising technology for cancer treatment. Essentially, body’s own immune system is taught how to recognize cancer cells and kill them. When other treatments have failed, immunotherapy can still shrink tumours and prolong survival. However, it doesn’t work for everyone – how to predict which patients could benefit […]

A team of researchers from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and the University of Michigan has redesigned and enhanced a natural enzyme that shows promise in promoting the regrowth of nerve tissue following injury. The new version of the enzyme is more stable and could lead […]

Karolinska Institutet and St. Erik Eye Hospital have entered into a collaboration with Novo Nordisk A/S to develop a new treatment for age-related macular degeneration. Novo Nordisk A/S will provide support and SEK 48 million in funding to enable a phase 1 clinical trial where new retinal cells generated from […]

Mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are linked to the development of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and other types of cancer. Genetic testing and counseling services can determine whether a person carries these mutations and, if they do, how the information could help inform cancer prevention or treatment decisions. In the first of […]

A new supply of a critical radioisotope advances personalized medicine. The Science Researchers have deployed a newly developed method to produce large quantities of copper-67. This material is a promising medical radioisotope–isotopes with applications in health care. The increased supply of copper-67 will enable clinical studies for new drug discovery […]

Deterioration of a part of the brain known as the medial temporal lobe can cause an older adult to make more impulsive decisions. One decision-making process — temporal discounting — places a greater value on a smaller and immediate outcome while dismissing a better but delayed outcome: instant gratification, in […]

Much of the world, including research at Penn Medicine, has focused its attention on how T cells — which play a central role in immune response — might shape the trajectory of COVID-19 infection, and how immunotherapy can shed light on treatment of the disease. Already a leader in immunotherapy research […]

Salk researchers mapped how DNA methylation changes over time in mice to better understand developmental disorders. In research that aims to illuminate the causes of human developmental disorders, Salk scientists have generated 168 new maps of chemical marks on strands of DNA—called methylation—in developing mice. The data, published July 29, […]

Scientists have uncovered new insights into the origins of Parkinson’s disease. The team, from the UK Dementia Research Institute at Cardiff University and the Oxford Parkinson’s Disease Centre, University of Oxford, studied the genes of more than 6,000 cells from a region deep in the middle of the brain called the […]

Bioengineers and surgeons from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) have shown that shielding stem cells with a novel biomaterial improve the cells’ ability to heal heart injuries caused by heart attacks. In a study using rodents, a team led by Rice’s Omid Veiseh and Baylor’s Ravi Ghanta showed it could […]

Alzheimer’s disease is a debilitating condition that is going to touch millions of aging people. It is incurable, even if treatment options are slowly getting better. Early start on these treatments is probably the best bet, but how can you predict that the person is going to develop Alzheimer’s before […]

Luis Ortiz-Rodríguez grew up on the beaches of Puerto Rico—surfing, swimming, and running in the hot sand—and swears he had never put on sunblock a day in his life. Then the day came when he peered through an ultrafast laser spectrometer at the College of Arts & Sciences and observed […]

Scientists at the University Bath have discovered a series of protein structures that are thought to be highly relevant to the onset of Parkinson’s disease. It is hoped that further analysis of these structures will open up a new avenue for a potential treatment for a disease that is the […]

Scientists have demonstrated a new way to precisely target cells by distinguishing them from neighboring cells that look quite similar. Even cells that become cancerous may differ from their healthy neighbors in only a few subtle ways. A central challenge in the treatment of cancer and many other diseases is […]

Extremely old people have such high mortality rates that studies such as this one here become practical, answering the question of how the gut microbiome changes in the final decline into death. It is well established that the gut microbiome is influential on health, and undergoes detrimental changes across the […]

Immunotherapies for cancer — treatments that prime the immune system to attack tumors — are valuable weapons in the anti-cancer arsenal. But some cancers are more difficult to target with this strategy than others. Today, scientists report a new type of immunotherapy that dramatically extends the survival of mice that […]

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered a way to regenerate, in mice and human tissue, the cushion of cartilage found in joints. Loss of this slippery and shock-absorbing tissue layer, called articular cartilage, is responsible for many cases of joint pain and arthritis, which afflicts more than 55 […]

Electrical stimulation a week before surgery causes nerves to regenerate three to five times faster, leading to better outcomes. A University of Alberta researcher has found a treatment that increases the speed of nerve regeneration by three to five times, leading to much better outcomes for trauma surgery patients. “We […]

How we adapt to aging late in life may be genetically influenced, according to a study led by a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside. The research, published in Aging Cell, has implications for how epigenetic factors related to aging. Epigenesis is a process in which chemicals attached to DNA […]

CNRS researchers at the Institut Curie have recently shown that cancer cells use a membrane protein that has been known for several decades to internalise iron. Published in Nature Chemistry (August 3rd, 2020), this work shows that the absorbed iron allows cancer cells to acquire metastatic properties. Biologists knew CD44 […]

When people say “cardiovascular disease” in the context of blood cholesterol, they mean atherosclerosis. This is the name given to the build up of fatty deposits that narrow and weaken blood vessels, leading to heart failure and ultimately some form of disabling or fatal rupture – a stroke or heart […]

Every year, 150 to 300 children in the United States are diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPGs), aggressive and lethal tumors that grow deep inside the brain, for which there are no cures. In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, researchers showed that experimental drugs designed to […]

Opioid use among women trying to conceive may be associated with a lower chance of pregnancy, suggests a National Institutes of Health study. Moreover, opioid use in early pregnancy may be associated with a greater chance of pregnancy loss. The study appears in Epidemiology. “Our findings indicate that women who […]

Nearly three-quarters of older adults with dementia have filled prescriptions for medicines that act on their brain and nervous system, but aren’t designed for dementia, a new study shows. That’s despite the special risks that such drugs carry for older adults – and the lack of evidence that they actually ease […]

A Garvan-developed platform is providing researchers access to genomic data that will help drive discoveries in severe mitochondrial and brain disorders. Medical researchers from across the globe will gain new insight into some of the most devastating inherited conditions, thanks to anonymized genomic and clinical summary data made available by […]

A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin has explored the role of factors in embryonic development that do not alter the sequence of DNA, but only epigenetically modify its “packaging”. In the scientific journal Nature, they describe how regulatory mechanisms contribute to the formation of […]

Four-stranded DNA structures – known as G-quadruplexes – have been shown to play a role in certain types of breast cancer for the first time, providing a potential new target for personalised medicine, say scientists at the University of Cambridge. In 1953, Cambridge researchers Francis Crick and James Watson co-authored […]

Genes that are thought to play a role in how the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects our cells have been found to be active in embryos as early as during the second week of pregnancy, say scientists at the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The researchers say […]

Since the late 1990s, immunotherapy has been the frontline treatment against lymphomas where synthetic antibodies are used to stop the proliferation of cancerous white blood cells. However, in the more than 20 years since their use began, the molecular mechanisms that underlie this therapy are still little understood. For the […]